This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

To find out how the AI market and how AI is being put to work are changing, InformationWeek reached out to three industry experts: Asheesh Mehra, CEO of AI vendor AntWorks; Christopher Rafter, COO of AI and analytics vendor Inzata; and Seth Earley, author of the forthcoming book The AI-Powered Enterprise.

They said that while some enterprises are beginning to see the anticipated benefits of AI, many companies have been disappointed with their early implementations of the technology. "The promise is still far ahead of the reality," said Earley. "A lot of money has been wasted on 'moon shot' AI projects. In many cases neither the vendors nor the customers really understood what was realistic and cost effective."

Mehra added that "all industries in some way, shape, or form" have failed to live up to the hype of AI.

But that doesn't mean that all AI projects are doomed to failure. "It’s not so much the industry, but the methods chosen for adopting AI that is impacting its success," said Rafter. "Expecting the AI to do too much and under- or over-training of models are the two biggest causes of failed AI projects today."

All three experts offered advice that could help enterprises overcome these obstacles.

Mehra said organizations should "think through your use case carefully" and "get the right people on the team."

"Don’t give data and the underlying information architecture short shrift," added Early. "We have seen $50-million digital transformation programs fail because execs drastically underestimated the cost of fixing data and putting into place the correct architecture and ontology. Without that, these digital transformation programs, which depend on an experience entirely comprised of data, will fail."

"Don’t go it alone," said Rafter. "The best AI is sourced broadly and trained on as much data as possible."

The experts also said that some industries have been doing better than others at implementing AI. As Rafter noted, "AI is lifting efficiency and performance across many diverse industries in 2020, with an array of benefits sweeping across multiple categories."

The following slides detail which industries are likely to see the most positive impact from AI in the short term.

Image: Pixabay

Cynthia Harvey is a freelance writer and editor based in the Detroit area. She has been covering the technology industry for more than fifteen years. View Full Bio

We welcome your comments on this topic on our social media channels, or [contact us directly] with questions about the site.